Darkness
by Analyn d'Ettore
Summary: Henry is surprised to learn Regina has a crippling fear of the dark stemming from her first marriage. Warning: parent/child invest and rape. Dark.


Warning: Contains parent/child incest and rape. Adult content. Not suitable for anyone under 18.

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><p>I woke up early in the morning, or perhaps it was late at night, to Henry peppering my face with kisses. I cracked an eye open though I could not see him in the darkness. The sun had not yet risen for no strips of light shone through the cracks in the blinds. "Henry?" I asked drowsily.<p>

Henry's voice, too, was husky from sleep. "Mmmmm. I love you."

Henry, my son turned lover, kissed further down my body and started suckling at my neck. I trembled at his touch. I loved the feelings he was giving me. I dreaded them.

The darkness was overwhelming. Overpowering. I lay still as Henry moved his attention to my breasts. He alternated licking and biting. The sensations shooting through my core were intense and powerful. How many times in the last month I'd encouraged him to pleasure my chest I did not know.

Then there was the darkness. It was all consuming and powerful and with its presence the pleasure I should have felt was being drawn from my body leaving me to enjoy nothing.

I hated the darkened room and the memories it engendered. "Henry, turn on the lights," I commanded.

The darkness was eating me alive. It was drawing all good memories from my body and leaving me with only the bad. "Busy," Henry said as he shifted his attention lower.

In the daylight hours I loved when his tongue touched and licked me below, giving me pleasure as only he could. In the darkness, the moment the rough surface of his tongue made contact I let out a whimper, though not one of pleasure.

Henry, alerted by the sound, crawled up to my head and it wasn't until he brushed a tear from my cheek and asked what was wrong did I even realize I was crying.

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><p>I never wanted the celebratory feast to end. Mother had gotten her wish. I was married to the king. I was the queen. We had wed earlier that day, and for hours everyone in the kingdom had been feasting and dancing in celebration of our nuptials. The reception was torturous for me, but I plastered a smile on my face as I danced with my husband, King Leopold, and later on with his daughter, Princess Snow. I was introduced to the other royals who had attended the feast in celebration. I hated celebrating my marriage when it only affirmed how my true love, Daniel, was dead. My wedding should have been a time of joy and anticipation. Instead, I faced my with dread.<p>

As much as I hated the reception and my feigned cheerfulness, I never wanted it to end, because as the night grew old there was only one place it would lead. The marriage bed.

I'd held childhood fantasies about giving myself to my love after we were married. I'd waited, though my husband was no love of mine. He was old, in his fifties, and at the tender young age of eighteen, the though of being bedded for the first time by a man of his age disgusted me.

I hid my trembles as my ladies maids came to fetch me and prepare me for bed as King Leopold instructed. So my torment began.

They led me through the castle until we reached my rooms. The rooms were large and elegant, though my eyes were drawn between the large, imposing bed in the center and the door that connected to my new husband's room.

My ladies maids spent the next hour divesting me of my many layers of clothing. The wedding dress was as elaborate as the entire ceremony, and in it I felt like a china doll, all dressed up in unnecessary fluff and meant to be looked at. King Leopold ordered the dress as such to show off his new queen. My hair was let down from its elaborate curls and the color removed from my face.

I was never helped into my dressing gown. Nude as the day I was born, I was led to the bed turned down and waiting for me. I slipped beneath the silk sheets. They were more comfortable and heavenly then I could have ever imagined sheets would be. They were fit for a queen. I would have loved the feeling of the silk against my bare skin except for the thought of the night to come nagging in my mind.

The ladies left me alone, and I clenched my hands together. My nails dug into my palms until a drop of blood formed there. King Leopold soon entered, followed by my mother and some of the higher ranking lords. They were all there to witness the consummation between the king and his new bride. Luckily, my body was hidden by the sheets. I could not have bourn the embarrassment otherwise.

I'd heard witnessing the consummation of marriage was a custom among royalty, but up until now I'd hoped it was only a rumor. Now I knew for certain it was not. I knew why my mother was there. She wanted to made sure my marriage was consummated, because then the only way for me to escape from my unwanted marriage was my death or his. The lords were there to make sure their knew queen was the wife in every way of the king so that any children I might bear my husband would be legitimate heirs.

Two valets helped King Leopold undress. Once he was naked, the flickering light from the candles was extinguished, casting the room into darkness. I could not see anything. I was aware of how the bed dipped down as King Leopold slid under the sheets beside me. I heard the quiet whispers of the lords as they waited for the king to claim me as his bride.

My skin was hyper aware as he made contact with my arm. His skin was burning, a sharp contrast to the goosebumps forming on my skin from my nerves. King Leopold shifted his weight over me. The entire length of his skin was pressing down on mine. I was suffocating. I wanted to escape. I wanted to call for help. No one would help me. No one would ever help me. I was the king's wife. By law, I belonged to him. He could do with me whatever he pleased as he was my husband. As he was my king.

His breath stank of wine and his skin was clammy to the touch. I clenched the silken sheets in my fists as I waited for the pain that was coming. My husband was a kind and gentle man. Under different circumstances, had he been younger or I older or had I loved him, I would have been pleased by his concern. To me, he was as good as a faceless stranger so concealed was he in the darkness of the night.

He leaned close to me and kissed my lips gently. I squeezed my eyes shut in an attempt to drown out everything that was happening. I laid still and did not respond to him. Then I felt him shift his weight until I could feel his breath on my ear. It was warm and it tickled. So low none of the spectators could hear, he whispered, "I want to make love to you, my queen, and to bring you pleasure you've never known before. But alas, I cannot tonight for I must perform for our audience."

He shifted his weight so I had some room to breath. His hands pulled my legs apart and he settled between the cradle of my thighs. My muscles clenched in anticipation and I felt tears forming in my eyes even though he had not even started. I felt the tip of what must have been his cock probing my entrance. I was humiliated and terrified so I was completely dry.

King Leopold noticed my dryness for he whispered to me, "I'm sorry."

I wanted to snap at him and tell him that if he was truly sorry he would not force me to consummate a marriage I did not want, but I was already his wife and his property. He had a right to my body whenever he choose. I hated the archaic rules that governed the land, and I vowed that as queen I would change them so that no woman after me would be placed in such a position. I wanted to call out rape in hopes that the spectators would come to my rescue, but I knew they never would. I was the king's wife, and by law a man cannot rape his wife. His wife, in entering into marriage, gave her body to him.

Instead, I laid still and tried to forget what was happening. I took myself to a world of my own creation, where it was just me and my True Love Daniel. We were reunited in an idyllic paradise. The surroundings were fuzzy, because he was most important. Despite my attempts to drown out reality with my imagination, the shooting pain chorusing through my body brought me harshly back.

I was limp and unmoving as I felt suddenly full. It was like a cane had been shoved into my body. I felt like I was being torn in two from the unforgiving hardness. An involuntary gasp escaped.

The pain eased marginally as the king withdrew. Distantly, I heard voices announcing that the deed had been done. Footsteps sounded as the spectators filed out of the room.

I felt like my flesh was being torn apart as the king thrust into me again. He grunted this time and I began counting in my head. I hoped he would be finished soon.

I wished I could say the pain faded and pleasure eventually took over but it never did. At some point my body started making moisture to protect itself but even that was not enough to soothe the ache and pain down below. All I had to do was exist and survive the experience. Then it would be over. At least for tonight. Right now was all I could think about.

I gasp as my new husband thrust into me particularly harshly and then stilled. He groaned and I felt him pulsing inside of me. Then he rolled off of me. I was frozen in shock.

He got up out of bed, though in the darkness I could not see him. I heard him leave the room. I was alone.

I let the tears that had only formed on my face spill uncontrollably from my eyes. His seed ran down my thighs, and I was sure in the morning I would see it mingled with my blood. I felt dirty and used. I might be a queen, but the king had treated me no different from a common whore.

I cried myself to sleep that night.

Despite promises of wanting to pleasure me, each night my husband came to me I could never feel aroused. The second time he came to me, just after our wedding night, the memories of the way he'd all but raped me replayed in my head on repeat, and so I felt no pleasure the second time. The pattern repeated itself the third and fourth time and so on until I lost count.

I began to long for my time of month, because on those nights the king would not come to my bedchamber at night. He came to me every other night. At first, he'd apologized and tried to make the experience pleasurable for me, though he never could. Eventually, he gave up trying.

I wished he would give up coming to me. During the day as talk of the future of the kingdom spread, I knew that the king was desperate for an heir. He had his beloved daughter, Snow White, but he wanted a son. A male heir would always inherit the kingdom over a daughter.

By the end of the first year, as his wife I had failed to give him the heir he wanted. This made him frustrated with me, and when he came to me our coupling was hard and painful. After he finished, he would prop my hips up on pillows in hopes that gravity would pull his seed into my womb and get me with child. He was sit with me in the darkness for ten long minutes afterwards to ensure I did not move.

Once the time was up, he would leave me completely alone. After the first few months, my heart had hardened so much I only felt slightly numb when he came to me and even more distant when he left. King Leopold, the gentlest and kindest man in the kingdom, had successfully broken my spirit. I was too broken to hate him for it.

The one saving grace during my entire marriage was that I never had to look upon him. He only ever came to me in the dead of night and made sure all the candles were extinguished before slipping into bed with me. In the pitch darkness of my chambers, I could envision him a monster rather than the old man he was during the day with his eyes alight with warmth and joy.

He was a brute of a husband. He was a man the entire kingdom save me loved.

He was the reason that I, the Evil Queen and master of dark magic, was afraid of the dark.

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><p>Henry said nothing after I finished my story. He went and turned on the lights. I saw dots in my eyes from the sudden brightness but I was glad for the light. It made my memories seem even more distant. Henry returned to the bed and laid beside me though he was careful not to touch me. His eyes were sympathetic and he appeared as hurt as I was feeling.<p>

I could not stand his pitying silence. "Please. Say something." I needed reassurance that he did not hate me for being so weak and allowing myself to be abused in such a manner.

"Why did you never tell me?" His voice was kind and gentle.

The answer was simple and I did not hesitate to give it to him. "You were my son. It was not your burden to bear."

"And now?" he asked. We both knew that since our sexual relationship began, I'd done my best to stop seeing him as my son and start seeing him as a man. If I did not, then our relationship could never progress. It had been hard at first, but now treating him as my equal rather than the child I fiercely protected came as second nature.

"I just don't want you to see how weak I really am." My voice was soft and broken. The tears flowed heavier down my face.

Henry pulled me into his arms and laid a gentle kiss on my forehead. The warmth of his embrace was comforting and exactly what I needed at the moment. I buried my face in his chest and just cried. Henry murmured sweet nothings, and it was the rumble of his voice rather than the content of his words that gave me comfort.

Henry was encouraging me to talk and let everything out. Never once had I told anyone of the part of my marriage that happened behind closed doors. The memories filled me with too much shame and were to hurtful to even bring to words. Henry coaxed me until I began speaking again.

"I failed him. I hate him but I hate myself even more."

Henry was taken aback by my statement. I tried to change the subject, but Henry would not let go. He insisted. He tried to tell me I shouldn't hate myself. But I did and no matter what he said he could not change the way I felt.

"It's all my fault," I cried and buried my face back in his chest for comfort.

His response was abrupt and fierce. He pulled me away and stared intently into my face. "It was_ never_ your fault. _Never._" The vehemence of his reassurance broke through to me on some level.

Before long, I was saying, "But it is my fault. I was never the wife he wanted. I couldn't ever feel aroused by him and he never felt pleasure from our times together. He kept mistresses, Henry, as if it wasn't humiliating enough for me. And the only reason he even shared the bed with me was because he needed an heir, and I failed to give him that. Henry, I failed!" I wailed desperately.

Henry was taken aback, and for the first time he was unsure what to do. I saw from his face that he wanted to refute everything I had just said and reassure me that nothing was my fault. I did not think I could bear such reassurances. I'd carried the guilt and blame for so long I did not want anyone, even Henry whom I loved more than anything else, to try to change that. Only I knew what I was feeling and I could not handle anyone undermining my feelings by telling me I was wrong in feeling the way I did.

I was grateful when Henry said nothing. He knew it was not the time or place to change my mind. From the fierce and protective expression he wore, I knew that later on he would try and convince me I was blameless and I should feel no guilt over my past marriage. I suspected that Henry, with his usual persistence and refusal to give up on me, would eventually wear my barriers down. Henry knew that too, which is why he did not push me when I was already feeling so upset.

We fell back asleep with the lights on. Only light could chase the darkness away.


End file.
